GnuPG and Python

[Igor Belyi]

Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Bernhard Reiter wrote:
>   
>> I wonder what the differences are between pyme and pygpgme.
>>     
>
> I *think* (having only read about pyme briefly a few months or more
> ago) that pyme is a bit more of a raw set of bindings to gpgme, being
> swig based.  While pygpgme feels a little more "pythonic" in its
> design.  Of course, I've only used pygpgme lightly and pyme not at
> all.  And both are still quite young and could change as they mature.
>
> I know that yum (the Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS update tool) uses
> pygpgme for many of its gpg needs.  Other than that, I haven't run
> into many tools using either.
>
> Hopefully I've not misrepresented or maligned the work of either the
> pyme or pygpgme authors. :)
>   
Yes, I think this is the right assessment of the implementation 
difference between pyme and pygpgme - pyme uses SWIG to have python 
binding for gpgme functions and then uses extra python classes/packages 
for pythonizing GPGME interface where as pygpgme does most of the work 
using Pyhton C API directly. In short, pyme hides behind SWIG from 
handling difference in Python and GPGME versions, where as pygpgme takes 
approach of having less dependencies on another product.

I didn't know that yum uses pygpgme since I'm more used to the Debian 
distribution which in its turn has pyme package but no pygpgme. As a 
result, Linux distribution could be another factor for choosing one 
versus another. Although, I wish Debian could pick up pygpgme in its 
package set as well to have a better test ground for usability of both.

That's my couple cents.
Cheers,
Igor, the PyMe maintainer.